The Bling Ring

The Bling Ring opens this year’s selection for Un Certain Regard. With her fifth movie, Sofia Coppola returns to the theme of lost teenagers in typically fine form. The story is true, based on Nancy Joe Sales’ Vanity Fair article The Suspects wore Louboutins: a gang of rich Hollywood teenagers accused of stealing more than $3 million in clothing and jewellery from Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and other stars.

Vanity and celebrity-worship are omnipresent as the new values of today’s world. These poor little rich kids don’t steal to hurt the celebrities: they do it because they want to be closer to them, to enjoy the lifestyle they idolise. And they’re bored of doing nothing and being no one.

But quickly, the audience is bored with them. Witnessing these Paris Hilton aspirants in her house for 90 minutes becomes redundant: they drive, they enter houses, they giggle with a lot of “Oh my God”, they steal, they take pictures of themselves for social networks, and they party – hard. And it goes on and on… The director tells us she aims not to judge her characters, but her camera is far too distant (except in a beautiful sequence-shot where we see two of the burglars in the act of burgling a house, in real time).

The soundtrack is furious, turbulent to the point of preventing the audience from thinking, forcing them to only witness. The cast is tremendous: Leslie Mann is funnier than ever as the home-schooling rich hippie mum; Emma Watson, Taissa Farmiga, Katie Chang, Claire Julien and Georgia Rock are each in their own way gripping; Israel Broussard, as the only male in this kitsch euphoria, is fantastic.

The Bling Ring is funny and boring, compassionate but ironic, luxurious and lustful. It is too much and nothing. It’s an enjoyable cinematographic moment, but not an unforgettable one.